Padres Daily: HR + SP + bad execution; Fernando Tatis Jr. moves up; Manny Machado too; plan at second

Good morning from Chicago,

Any game in which there are nine home runs has to be considered to have been decided by the long ball.

JP Sears acknowledged that his falling behind and then laying pitches in the middle of the strike zone was the “story” of last night’s game. Additionally, Ron Marinaccio’s pitches have increasingly become home runs in waiting.

But the homers — and the rightful blaming of another too-short outing by a starting pitcher — blurred some troubling facts for the Padres.

They are not playing sharp, smart baseball. They are not driving in runners with ample opportunities.

A night after a baserunning blunder arguably cost the Padres at least one run and defensive mistakes cost them two, a pair of bad throws on one play led to a game-tying run and cost Sears 13 extra pitches in last night’s first inning.

And the trend of Padres runners reaching scoring position with zero or one outs and then not getting home continued. They have during their four-game losing streak gone 7-for-35 (.200) with runners in scoring position. They have scored just three of their six times they have had a runner on second base with no outs, which is far less than the historical average of MLB teams scoring in nearly 70% of those instances.

You can read about all that went wrong plus the Cubs’ five home runs and the Padres’ four home runs in my game story (here) from the  9-7 loss.

Starters, the end

First, foremost and forever (or at least until and unless they figure out how to fix it) the Padres’ biggest albatross is its starting rotation.

We can talk about a lot of other things that might help make a difference here and there, but the starters are going to be the end of the Padres unless something changes. As I wrote in Monday’s newsletter, the Padres have no chance to make the postseason unless a rotation that ranks 25th in ERA and 27th in innings pitched gets markedly better.

And it is only getting worse.

Last night was the ninth time in the past 13 games that a Padres starting pitcher failed to complete five innings.

Sears threw 88 pitches while allowing seven runs (six earned) in 4⅔ innings last night. That was the most outs recorded by a starting pitcher in any of the past four games.

Honestly, we have been talking about this starting rotation every day for a while.

So that’s enough.

After this:

Oh yeah

Fernando Tatis Jr. provided a reminder of what he has done for a long time and perhaps what he can still do with more regularity.

He practically doubled his season home run total last night, hitting a ball out of Wrigley Field in the first inning and getting the Padres to within two runs with a wind-blown homer in the eighth.

“Fernando is a great player,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “We’re starting to see him kind of come out of that no-power kind of funk that he was in earlier. Love the at-bats that he’s taking. The one in the first inning was a really amazing at-bat. He showed patience and then also power in the same at-bat. You just feel like any time that he’s at the plate when he’s swinging like that, he can leave the yard.”

Tatis’ second homer was the 157th of his career, moving him past Phil Nevin for fourth on the Padres’ all-time list.

“Means I’m getting old, right?” the 27-year-old Tatis joked.

Two more games like last night, and Tatis will tie Adrián González for third. Another two-homer game after that would tie Nate Colbert for second and put Tatis behind only Manny Machado, who last night hit his 210th home run as a member of the Padres.

Tatis almost certainly won’t be getting his home runs in pairs. But the notion he could move up near the top of the list relatively rapidly is not so ridiculous as it would have been a little while ago.

All five of Tatis’ homers this season have come in his past 28 games.

Tatis essentially stopped fiddling at the plate in the middle of May, when he still had no home runs and a batting average below .240 and an OPS below .600.

Last night, he ran his on-base streak to 23 games, tied for longest of his career. It is the longest active streak in the majors.

In 32 games since May 24, Tatis is batting .345/.383/.525.

His first homer (106 mph) and a third-inning groundout (109.1 mph) last night were his 59th and 60th balls this season hit at 105 mph or harder. That is third-most in the major leagues. Of those, an MLB-leading 28 have come since May 29.

“Getting more into rhythm and feeling that flow,” Tatis said. “… Creating motion and being able to stay consistent with that and trust it, which is most important.”

Manny too

Machado’s 384 career home runs are tied with Aaron Judge and Dwight Evans for 69th all-time.

Machado and Judge are tied for fourth among active players.

Machado’s 16 home runs lead the Padres and are tied for 15th in the NL. He is the only player in the major leagues with at least 16 home runs in each of the past 12 seasons.

He is on pace for his first 30-homer season since 2023 and the eighth of his career.

He is already the only player with at least 27 home runs in each of the past 10 full seasons (excluding the covid-shortened 2020 campaign). Just 25 players have ever had more such seasons in their career. Of those, 18 are in the Hall of Fame, one (Albert Pujols) is not eligible and five are not in the Hall presumably because they have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs.

It’s bad, but …

Last night concluded the Padres’ second consecutive losing month.

After going 1-4 in March and 18-7 in April, they went 13-15 in May and finished June 11-15.

They are 14-23 since May 19.

We love perspective here, so let’s consider that there are 78 games remaining and the Padres have a winning record.

In three of the four seasons since the playoffs were expanded to six teams in each league, 87 wins have been enough to get into the National League playoff pool.

Over the past 26 seasons, 22 teams have finished with at least 87 victories in a year in which they had at least one 37-game stretch in which they won 14 or fewer games.

Second act

Jake Cronenworth played in his first major league game in nearly two months on Monday.

In a way, getting back on the field has been like riding a bike. All felt normal. But there was an additional feeling.

“It’s a relief,” he said yesterday.

Cronenworth spent three games at Triple-A and before that took about a dozen at-bats against minor leaguers at the Padres’ complex in Arizona.

That workload after spending the previous seven weeks resting and working back from a concussion was the biggest reason he was not in yesterday’s lineup.

Instead, with left-hander Matthew Boyd pitching for the Cubs, Tatis made his 38th start at second base.

“I think Croney eventually is going to get the play against some lefties,” manager Craig Stammen said. “Today, one, it works out that it’s a lefty, and Croney has played four in row after not playing for a month-and-a-half or two months. But that’s when ‘Tati’ will probably play second — when we (face) a lefty or when we want to give Xander (Bogaerts) a day off (at shortstop).”

The odd man out most days is utility infielder Sung-Mun Song, who is a left-handed batter like Cronenworth. Song has just five plate appearances against lefties and has not reached base in any of those.

Tidbits

• A wind that whipped toward the outfield bleachers virtually the entire game carried three of last night’s home runs over the wall. The other six homers likely would have been out anywhere at any time. But they would not have traveled as far as they did. The six home runs with a projected distance of 414 feet or longer were the second most in a game this season behind the four apiece hit by the Brewers and Athletics in their June 8 game in Las Vegas.
• Wandy Peralta replaced Marinaccio with two runners on base, got the final two outs of the eighth inning and did not allow a run while getting through the ninth. That extended his career-best scoreless streak to 18 innings. The streak began June 1.
• Marinaccio has allowed six home runs over his past 11 games after allowing two in his first 17 appearances. He has gone from allowing a home run every 57.5 batters to one every 12.8 batters.
• Ty France reached base his first four times up yesterday before hitting a fly ball out in the ninth inning. He had two singles, walked and was hit by a pitch. France is batting .379 (11-for-29) with four doubles and two homers over his past 10 games. He has a .479 on-base percentage in that span.
• France, who was hit by more pitches (126) than any MLB player from his debut in 2019 through last season, was hit just twice in his first 57 games (176 plate appearances) of 2026. He has been hit three times in his past four games (14 plate appearances).
• Tatis’ 17th leadoff homer increased his franchise record. He has seven more than second-place Will Venable.
• The Padres lost for the first time in five games this season in which they had at least 13 hits. Since 2022, they are 76-4 when having at least 13 hits and 19-3 when having exactly 13 hits.

All right, that’s it for me.

Early game today (11:20 a.m. PT) and then a flight to Los Angeles.

Talk to you tomorrow.